But may I, when again I have the city's crush
and tangled noise-skein and furor
of its traffic wrapped around me, alone,
may I above that thick confusion
recall sky and the gentle mountain rim
on which the far off plodding herd curved homeward.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
from "The Spanish Trilogy"

I
I wade through days of light
like movable night
enter them
with a carnival of rich
carnal klaxons
blaring what I think
unable to uncover
clues about who is moving
in these tight pants and sunglasses
who steps on New York City sidewalks'
hundred billion club-footed bacteria --
Deafening din of the "world"
declares our separateness
walking down a gritty street
in downtown summer city stew
mass tepid squalor
compartmentalizing my
contemptuously stupid boring advertising job.
At 5:58 again
no matter what the song
clockradio curdles spirit
sours mind, kills dreaming
slays the composer writing aubades
in lazy morning afterglow.
On the dawn-chilled depot platform
I resist the deep despot echo of ghost freedom deposed
barely making it through the commute, a simple refuge
sinking deeper into my vinyl seat
on this loco-
motive with no ulterior
centrifugal express identity crisis --
journalizing these petty bourgeois inconveniences
at each of the many station stops
on this transforming track --
Temporary comfort of rattling sleep tames no fear
desires sublimate under fluttering lids
and you can't hear the difference
between the voices of spirit or of ego --
inner talk blares as towns pass quickly
smudge of sage and tobacco resolves the blur
sated, grateful and impatient --
Phantoms xylophone march abductions in childhood's nightmare
paper skeletons grab yr neck and armpits, you pull the covers up close
aliens in the elevator shift yr lymph nodes through shallow throat --
Dad speedballs with a diabetic whose wife throws his leg prothsesis
out the 19th Fl. window
while mom gets high to Leon Russell in the kitchen with her hairdresser --
Indian doctors whisper like chipmunks in a sterile forest
of disinfected linoleum, crackling their foil and bubblewraps
pop out a superdrug which makes things worse on purpose.
Remembering these dreams feels like moving chest-out through a swarm of bees;
violently thrashing at your artful, evasive enemy
who analyzes you with surgical apparition --
Leftover dung and litter grains hang out of the cat's butt
you kiss her anyway,
crumple up a page, drain the juice glass --
On 16th St. bright morning work walk
city keels over its incendiary bed
repeats like greasy eggs on a stale roll
I am point at the moon --
May my spirit be like rock
The "Temp" life is a freelance shaft
by wealthy bosses who ruminate on the art of suppression
and ram it up your ass
so there is no problem as long as you have
no problem with that
otherwise, you will french-kiss iron storm grating,
tear flesh on razor spikes of office chair floor mats,
travel with an attache of grief and heartburn, a stained tie, ink spotted pocket
get bloody carpet burns connecting ethernet transcievers under a hundred desks
pavement gravel embedded in shoulder and knee, tangled in a mass of localtalk
red rose petals sprinkled on your forehead, shower drips on frontal bone
ÜÜ they will wrestle the cellular phone from your cold, rigid fist
and you will have no big idea whatsoever --
II
Sitting meditation; not sitting
what's the difference?
Lotus fold of knee or
mind rasp, inhalation -- filter of
auric mouth
taking and giving pains and pleasures
folded like origami on mirror
pulsing tingle
between scrolled eyes and thighs --
All the time
I wondered who you were
because I had no idea who I was
it was over before we knew
it was over just when we got
a glimmer
or because of that --
Crescent moon
in crisp October twilight
cuts through blurred vision
embracing the current dilemma,
surrender completely to falling leaves, burning in piles,
unsharp smokescreen above orange sunset at century's horizon.
Autumn brings death
as a call to practice
mindful awareness,
stir static life into sweetness,
what we cling to like newborns
ripped away impersonally from the breast
like leaves from its tree by the solvent wind.
Beauty continually ripens.
It seems like roses but blushes deeper.
it just seems and traffics in the illusory.
Place the hidden market between us
and we always move toward that boundary.
Create the hungry mouth on yourself
and it sucks only a brief moment of forgetting
like phantom nipple rising and falling with breath.
You root for the ghost and she
suckles you in dreamtime rebirth.
Autumn renews
a call to satisfy every wish
a sleeping song
to last the winter long
a warmth to counter
bright coldness we deny most painfully --
deep reminder of stellar origin
siren who calls you singing from the
blackness between stars.
I stare out the window at
blur of yellow trees in
bright sun glare --
My thoughts rush ahead
to spring out of body
on the 7:52 --
There is no hour and seventeen minutes wasted
each trip defines what your made of
alone or in public
another bead is pulled along the string.
Must careful rosary the Samaya
and not transgress it
this pious vow of comet entrails
drives its repetitive emptiness home
curls like incense into rams horns
crushes them with huge epochal tires, great red cushions
beneath blinding afterimage red-shifts --
icy star pizza scraped off the
cold dark roadway acclimates quickly
halting convection, her specular black lace teddy
dresses the breasts of the Milky Way --
Mala beads tap out an invisible code
to name my aspiration, invisible man shielded from
who mustn't see me, night as I am
often marvelous yet reaching closer into fear like
abundant mackerels on my spleen
nibbling away self-esteem --
A fair day follows a suffering one
as I fall asleep in the warm satin
Indian-summer breeze.
III
Gaia mother, our survival all but forgotten
betrayed daily with a kiss and a chemical
driven away with your car and your testicles --
Forget other lives, your almond eyes,
persimmon juice running down your chin --
Carthaginian goddess worshipper sins
gasping with spotted fever and a curse on his breath
innocent youth who lay on blankets of rabbit fur
listening to Simon & Garfunkle's Bookends, watching
a votive flicker behind colored crushed glass, crackling hempseed
through dirty windows over Murray Hill rooftops.
Deep memories come forward with faces hardly recognized
masks you wore light up in sequence, a museum
running through bush in Rio De Janeiro
in 1683 on the tribal stump fasting
from wild rice and boar --
Castle Duino crashing surf, night life in Prague
distant sound of Rodin's chisel against stone --
Sad, hobbling cripple struggling
across 11th Ave. to reach the bus stop and the bus doesn't stop --
head bowed in ghostly shadows of florescent shelter --
Crow pecking carrion on frosted Palisades
family members die mile after mile, you walk down that lonesome road
toss through sleepless nights worrying --
Every night of new love includes the danger
of eighteen years of hard work commuting from a vapid suburbia
to raise a child that will betray your image and make their own way
maybe make you proud, maybe not, President, rapist, doctor or killer
surely watch you die one day and take over your world --
Illness takes root in slums and dark alleyways of cities
from Atlantic to Pacific
while you tune your electric guitar
and fumble through the Pentatonic
in your comfy condo with two TVs and a full pantry --
Blind woman in front of the Helen Keller Center
who hailed a taxi, lost the U-ring on the harness of her seeing-eye dog
and bent at the waist, arms outstretched, called out "Sasha!, Sasha come!
Come Sasha!, Sasha!!"
Even the Pakistani cabbie called out with her while the black lab
was smelling the curb three feet away --
That lame old man who walked past you signing Reiki
transformed at the Union Square farmer's market --
his cane caught your pants leg
came out from under him and fell --
for a moment he realized he didn't need it --
You acquire his limp and count your blessings --
You forget you bless others in mysterious ways and
bless yourselves, being instruments of teachings moving through life
auspiciously with blinders --
Remember
simple fearless embrace of wind
maskless riding endless roads, strong as you stride
past the aisle of parked cars toward the depot platform --
Remember
when the teacher fails you can only turn to Nature
not your little 'self' --
night steeps a rich supple mead,
your damp, slippery costume witchy leather cape ripples
you carry armfuls of indian corn, wear the brick bandanna of city --
Remember
you were not made to lose track of yourself on these tracks
lose face in the face of a sea of blank stares, lose right action
right livelihood, the Paramitas, lose the one you love to painful cigarettes
through a salesman's mask, psychic carpet mines in your office zone
war theatre of corporate Amerika strategized void of nature:
'no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body
no mind, no appearance, no end of appearance, no old age and death
no IRA, no Keogh, no quarterly bonus, no dental, no pension
no end of old age and death, no suffering, no origin of suffering
no cessation of suffering --
you were not meant to suffer this way
not made mean, not made to suffer but to be reminded --
IV
Vanguards of meditation's temporary silence
shout primordial raw closure of millennium
come back to simple easy breathing.
They took the long way home but got there
and lived for impermanence.
Cradling zen, I sit quietly and remember them --
Pioneers hoisting sails to course new destinies
arrive in promised lands great guns blazing their grainy, immigrant film.
They took the Ellis Isle short stick and struck a staff to part the celluloid sea
standing by the West Side Hwy to capture newly homeless men
sitting one leg, one bottle up on the cement dividers, tilted fedoras backgrounded
by a misty Hudson sunset.
Brooklyn Padmasambhava on his lotus-throne barstool, swirling skullcup
of ambrosia on tap --
casting thunderbolts across pure-land skies to magnetize wandering mind --
Mahakala's consort in tight lame, singing in her anguished pleasure, one leg
across his thighs
in leopard skins and pumps, eyes and fangs gleaming.
Exotic dancer devours our mutual neurosis, our transgressions are bounced at the door --
Teach crash course in physics by direct chemical injection of crossword theorem solved
juice to draconian brain stem, cloned mind of Elohim re-heralds new age
a mega-bio-ragtime-raga, music which generates
surreal freeform holograms, atomized fragrant oils and pulse of
tuned endorphin pleasure as you recline in your vibrating nuclear Barcalounger
of 21st century quantum schismroom chomping ginseng bonbons --
How safe with a wife and kids and condo and reliable sales job
and how dead, lost to one or another unreasonable reasonableness
falling out at night with a bag of Fiddle-Faddle in front of Dynasty to fantasize
about lives that seemed even more unreasonable though richly abundant
lives that moved from scene to scene, tortuous pain, sex, revenge, elation
without ever waking up from their programmed dream --
Open rivers of faces rushing in waves of spiked, slicked, curled, flowing
freshly washed hair dancing through Beltane -- how open morning yogurt and granola
greenness of green, redness of red, smell of coffee from street carts on 5th Ave. --
open grip on my attache, open destiny with a face veil hiding its beauty --
early astral AM dream reveals:
< moving too fast on a motorized skateboard down a steep and curving hill
comedian Adam Sandler dressed in a young girl's Sunday church outfit
standing on the high dive in an Olympic swim meet, a giant crayola crayon- mobile
like the deep mine drilling rigs from Total Recall, rides through the grassy field
in one huge sexual insinuation >
V
In other homes, other ringing clocktower bells peal, other skylines hold you
Fearless Dharma Bridge is approached and crossed with Radiant Intellect --
Crisis and suffering keeps you crossing avenues, keeps you dancing, groomed to truth
favorite watch telling time in mantra, not hours.
Your child with limbs intact, conscious compassionate demeanor of sweetness
loves you with such pure innocence and devotion that she will be a bright
polished mirror
until the day you die and become one for her -- being mirrored, remembered,
grateful for life
beyond the limits of sense, free in the moment, at home where nothing's happening --
Sing precious incarnation with any voice that suits you, imprint the cloudy fabric
of this blue sky
realm with your unique design -- no talon to tear it open at the heart, or get you past
the Eagle's
devouring eye, tortoise rising with its head through a ring, serpent's devouring surge
to ourobouros --
Your lover leaves and then returns, ripples on the mountain lake converge and spread
who you really are becomes a taste in your mouth like an ancient fruit you cannot name
a garden you cannot tend, beliefs you can't defend, feelings you won't recall until
you turn that corner
and she's there, bright eyes swirling with mischievous light --
Leave yourself behind in the time it takes
to evaporate deep releasing signal breaths
integrate everything suppressed
to your senses dilate and forgiving
in a flash of instant remembering
with no big deal, out of nowhere
an old friend phones and then
the touch on an elbow from a Lakota wiseman
sends up smoke signals
he observes the environment through hawk eyes --
The hawk teaches its lesson of the "Old Way" to
a field mouse by devouring it, releasing its spirit to the wind --
Nothing is lost in that warrior's love
no memories distract his victorious beak from the kill.
No track squeal distorts the absolute
knowing where you are truly going.
I wade through days of light like movable night
push through nights of pain
like a wind-whipped nightflame into the lamp's mantle
like a sun ray lifting the faces of new spring flowers
on the other side of the hill.